Semiconductor devices such as memory devices and processors are widely used in computers and electronic products. A memory device often has many memory cells to store data. The memory device may also include associated support circuitry to access the memory cells and to provide communication with other devices. In some memory devices, the memory cells and the support circuitry are formed as a single semiconductor die enclosed in an integrated circuit package or chip.
For some electronic products, to increase data storage capacity for a given die size, features in the device (e.g., transistors and connecting elements) may be shrunk to create more room for additional memory cells. Additional conductive lines in the device may also be created to accommodate the additional memory cells. Since the die may remain the same size, the additional conductive lines may cause the total number of conductive lines to become dense.
Dense conductive lines in the device may increase capacitive loading, capacitive coupling, or both, leading to possible poor device performance. Moreover, shrinking feature size in semiconductor devices may be limited by a minimum achievable dimension. Thus, in devices where the features are already at the minimum achievable dimension, further reduction in the dimension of the device features may be unachievable. Increasing data storage density in these devices may be difficult. Therefore, alternative fabrication and packaging techniques may be needed to achieve increased data storage capacity in semiconductor devices.